The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (353 page)

Palacios , Francisco de
.

See
PEREDA
.

 
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(1601–73).
Dutch portrait and
genre
painter, active mainly in his native Delft. He was a pupil of
Mierevelt
and Dirk
Hals
and his paintings resemble those of his masters—his portraits rather wooden, his ‘merry company’ groups of soldiers, cavaliers, and their ladies livelier and pleasantly coloured. His younger brother
Palamedes I Palamedesz
. (1607–38) and his nephew
Palamedes II Palamedesz
. (1633–1705) were both painters.

 
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palette
.

A flat board, usually rectangular, ovoid, or kidney-shaped, and generally with a hole for the thumb, on which artists arrange their paints ready for use; early examples sometimes had a handle, rather like a table-tennis bat, but a thumb-hole is now standard. Palettes first appeared
c.
1400; before then individual containers (sometimes shells) were used for mixing colours. For oil painting, mahogany is traditionally considered the best material for palettes, although other close-grained hardwoods have been used. Materials such as porcelain or ivory have been used by watercolour or
miniature
painters and also sometimes by oil painters—
Millais
, for example, used a porcelain palette early in his career, when he painted with fastidious detail and wished to avoid muddying his colours. For many artists, choice of their pigments and the order in which they are set out on the palette is a very important and personal matter and much advice was published on how to ‘set’ a palette in handbooks of the 17th and 18th cents. By extension, the term ‘palette’ thus refers to the range of colours characteristic of an artist;
Caravaggio
has a dark or restricted palette,
Monet
a bright or rich palette.

 
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palette knife
.

A thin, flexible, dull-edged blade, set in a handle, used for mixing paint, scraping it off the
palette
or canvas and also as a painting instrument (although more delicate tools—‘painting knives’—are often preferred for this purpose). Palette knives became popular in the 18th cent., ordinary knives being used for the purpose before this. The trowel shape commonly used today is said to have been invented by
Courbet
.

 
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(
c.
1548–1628).
Venetian painter, great-nephew of
Palma Vecchio
. He is said to have been a pupil of
Titian
, but this tradition has been doubted (it is probably based on the fact that he completed the
Pietà
which Titian left incomplete at his death). In the late 1560s and early 1570s he worked in central Italy, mainly Rome, but thereafter he spent the rest of his life in Venice, and after the death of
Tintoretto
in 1594 he was the leading painter in the city. His style was influenced by several of his great Venetian predecessors—
Veronese
as well as Titian and Tintoretto—and by central Italian
Mannerism
. He was extremely prolific, fulfilling many commissions from abroad as well as for Venetian churches, and his later work is often mechanical. As well as religions pictures, he painted historical and mythological works, and he also made etchings.

 
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(
c.
1480–1528).
Italian painter, born near Bergamo, but active for all his known career in Venice, where he is first documented in 1510. His original name was Jacomo Negreti , but he was using the name Palma by 1513. He is called Palma Vecchio (Old Palma) to distinguish him from
Palma Giovane
(Young Palma ), his great-nephew. Nothing is known of his training, and there is indeed very little secure knowledge about his life and works, none of his pictures being dated or reliably signed and very few of them being certainly identifiable from early sources. His style is distinctive, however, and in practice the definition of his
œuvre
is much less problematic than with many of his contemporaries. He painted a few altarpieces for Venetian churches, but most of his work was done for private clients, his speciality being half-length portrayals of beautiful and voluptuous blonde-haired women, sometimes in religious or mythological guise. In opulence of colour and beauty of handling they show the influence of the early work of
Titian
, and the finest, such as the celebrated
La Bella
(Thyssen Coll., Madrid), are worthy of his name. Palma also painted some
Giorgionesque
reclining nudes and some male portraits. His work was influential on painters of the next generation in Venice, notably
Bonifazio Veronese
.